Whilst the application of revenue management has been widely practised in the airline industry for thirty years it has been slow to spread through other transportation sectors despite the massive financial benefits that have been derived.

Here we'll explain the background of Revenue Management and the methodology of CONSULTECOM.

Revenue Management is the term used to describe the process of achieving maximum revenue from the sale of perishable assets. It's a combination of market segmentation, inventory control, forecasting, pricing and other disciplines; a combination of people, systems and organisation.

It leads to a few key questions:

Whatís it about? It's about the application of information systems and pricing strategies to allocate the right type of capacity to the right kind of customer at the right place at the right time so as to maximise revenue.

How did it start off? It started in the airline industry in the late ë70s following deregulation of the industry in the US. Carriers needed to protect their high yield business from aggressive new competitors.

Will it work for me? Generally Revenue Management works best when a companyís products or services are more or less fixed in terms of capacity and when that capacityís revenue earning potential diminishes over time.

Who uses it? In addition to the early adopters in the airline industry it's now prevalent in car hire, hotels, cruise and cargo businesses and, most recently, in tour operating.

What if I'm interested? Then weíll build a business case together, talk to your IT team and external system suppliers about whatís on offer, build a tender and execute it.

Then? Normally two major streams of work emerge - the Revenue Management (RM) system development and integration to your existing systems, and concurrently the build of the detailed customer proposition.